138 ELLE AUSTRALIA
turned off by what she’s doing. On the other hand,
she says, “When my sexual and intimacy needs are
being met, I feel whole, like I’m not approaching
[new] men from a place of need or desperation.”
Although it’s hard for many to imagine
being a sort of auxiliary lover as anything
other than agony – as a competition for
time with an adversary who holds the best
cards: the years together, the marriage
certificate, the kids – Beth and many of the
other women I talked to said it’s much
easier being, shall we say, number two
rather than number one. “I’ve been the
primary in open relationships, and it’s
really challenging,” she says. As
a secondary, she feels “less jealous and
less threatened”, because to lose the guy
would be to lose someone important but
not the person “at the centre of my world”.Most of the women I interviewed – 10 in all
- raved about dating polyamorously married men.
They were excellent communicators, the women
said, because to navigate the inevitable minefields
of non-monogamy, they had to be. The women
attested to feeling loved, adored and cared for:
lots of dinners, weekends away, holidays. But
they didn’t have to play the classic mistress
role, either. Since transparency was required – and
they were involved, in some way, with the wife
or primary partner – they could be out in public
as the “girlfriend”.
“I loved her like a sister,” says 35-year-old activist
Ivy of her boyfriend’s primary girlfriend. “I don’t
know any woman who isn’t occasionally like,
‘God, I just wish someone else would handle
my husband tonight. Just make sure he’s okay
and give him a blow job.’ I [gave her] that. And
I got weeks off, but still got to feel the love of
these two people.”
Still, Susan – a 44-year-old graphic designer who
likes being a secondary because she tends to feel
suffocated as part of a traditional couple –
acknowledges that there’s an inherent sadness to the
set-up. “They get to go home to their partners and
have a conversation around what it was like for
them,” she says. “I go home and sleep in my own
bed alone. Which can be really amazing, but I don’t
have somebody to [immediately] share my
experiences with. And as the secondary lover, it’s
harder to ask for
support. I feel like the
man’s responsibility is
towards his primary
relationship, especially
if there are children.
What’s left for me?”
When jealousy does
arise, these women
seem to have found
a way to keep it from
consuming them. Ivy
says her immersion in the
“open community” has transformed her attitude
towards the emotion. She recalled a time when her
boyfriend cancelled their plans so he could visit his
main girlfriend. “At first, I felt that rising feeling of
disappointment and feeling slighted,” she says.
“Then I thought, ‘What if I put on this new belief:
what could be great about having the weekend
alone? Well, I’ll be able to just drop into myself. I’ll
be able to read. I’ll be able to spend time walking in
the park.’ We were raised with this idea that life is
a zero-sum game. If you believe that and try this,
you’re going to be in for a world of pain. You’re
going to be like, ‘I’m not getting that; she’s getting
that.’ I’m not saying it’s easy to switch paradigms,
I’m just saying that it can be beneficial, for pretty
much every area of life.”
Rationalisation? Perhaps. But could it also be that
Ivy has successfully cultivated a mental framework
to cope with reality: namely, that we can’t always be
at the top of the list, even of those who love us.Ivy and Beth both want children, and they
don’t think they have to become monogamists to do
it. Ivy hopes to raise any kids she has in a communal
setting; as for Beth, she says, “I’m actively looking for
a partner, a co-parent or a sperm donor. This is my
primary goal for the next year.”
The women who have made this model work all
simultaneously dated other people to ward off
putting undue emphasis or expectation – psychically
and practically – on someone who already had
a wife and possibly a family. Another management
strategy of sorts: though many of the women said
they were in love, they didn’t think their partner was
The One. “There were certainly aspects of [my
partners] that were attractive, but I was never ]6.6%
OF AUSTRALIANS
ARE CURRENTLY
IN SOME FORM
OF AN OPEN
RELATIONSHIP